ANOTHER VOICE

Time for Dudley to act like an earl and belt up

AUBERON WA UGH

Iwas unable to write a Spectator column last week, having fled the country in terror at plans for a nationwide demonstration of priests, clergymen and other unemployed people called 'Hands Across Britain'. In the event, I gather the demonstration was a great flop, but the prospect of being seized by plump, soft clerical hands wherever I walked was more than I could face.

In Spain, brooding on my cowardice, I also wondered whether I had been wise to preserve a dignified silence in the face of Lord Dudley's letter to the Spectator of 18 April in which he accused me of 'deceit, lies and unfair innuendo'.

To say of an established member of the journalistic profession that he is a deliber- ate deceiver etc is a fairly dangerous thing, especially if it is based on a single matter whose truth is easily established. In my experience of the libel law, which may be even more extensive than Lord Dudley's, I would put it at £20,000 in out-of-court settlement, and any sum you care to mention after litigation. Perhaps someone told him that respectable journalists do not sue for libel unless they are accused of treason or taking bribes. That has always been my rule, although it does not apply, of course, to counter-claims where the r.j. is himself being sued.

But dignified silence does not always work, either, as I found to my irritation on returning from abroad, by which time another long, tendentious and, I am sorry to say, rather misleading letter from Lord Dudley had appeared (`Dudley vs Forbes', Letters, 2 May).

My earlier silence was inspired, more than anything else, by an earnest desire not to bore Spectator readers with a continua- tion of other people's squabbles. However, they have already been bored to tears, and I now feel I have an obligation to explain to them, in as unboring a way as possible, what it is all about. So here goes.

In October 1982 Lady Dudley, better known as the actress Maureen Swanson, was asked to accompany Princess Michael of Kent on an American tour. In the course of that tour, they spent a weekend at the Washington embassy where certain events either occurred or did not occur — I do not know whether they did or not — which caused Lord Dudley to write to Mr John Barratt, Prince Michael's secretary, in August 1983 that criticism of his wife's conduct had been made by Princess Michael as early as the previous November (1982),

when she told Mrs Jonathan Aitken that the British Ambassador in Washington (Sir Oliv- er Wright) had told her, Princess Michael personally, that my wife's conduct during the weekend in Washington had been so odious and outrageous that the Ambassador would never invite her to the Embassy again.

That is Lord Dudley's account. Mr Barratt gives a slightly different one, Whatever the rights or wrongs of it, Lord Dudley under 'emotions of deep resent- ment', as he described them in a letter to Prince Michael, and feeling that his wife had been unfairly treated, composed and circulated a poem about Princess Michael, which has variously been described as scurrilous and obscene. I have not read it. What is possibly the only surviving copy of this poem is now in the safekeeping of Sir Rex Williams, senior partner of Messrs Clifford-Turner, of New Bridge Street, the royal solicitors. In July 1984 Mr Alastair Forbes referred to this incident in an article in the Literary Review which attracted a letter from Lady Dudley's solicitors on 7 January 1985, leading to last month's libel action before Mr Justice Drake and a jury (see Another voice, 11 April).

The second string to Lady Dudley's plaint, and the one on which I judged that a defence of fair comment or even justifica- tion would have been available to the defendants, if they could have afforded the gamble, was where Forbes claimed that activity by the royal solicitors had 'effec- tively zipped his [Lord Dudley's] and his wife's lips'. Lord Dudley challenged me to produce the letters which would support this opinion under threat of being thought a deceiver by Spectator readers.

`I can also state as a positive fact for which I have conclusive evidence,' he wrote to the Spectator on 2 May, `. . . that it is untrue that my wife's lips were

effectively zipped up by any such letter, or that any letter exists likely to have influ- enced the jury to reach a different verdict.' He also states as 'a positive fact' for which he has 'conclusive evidence' that no letter was ever received from 'the "Royal" solici- tors or any other solicitors'.

Very well. I suppose I had better pro- duce the letters. On the second point, I have in front of me the photocopy of a letter from Sir Rex Williams, Princess Michael's solicitor, to Lord Goodman, Dudley's representative, dated 20 Decem- ber 1983. He acknowledges receipt of Lord Dudley's letter to Princess Michael, and confirms that his client will not pursue her complaint or seek any further remedy in return for indemnification of her costs and the surrender of copies of the poem by Lord Goodman's client.

On the first point, of whether or not Lady Dudley's lips were effectively zipped, it is true that we have not seen any letter from solicitors making a complaint, but we have seen Lord Dudley's own letter to Princess Michael, delivered to her solici- tors and written 'on behalf of my wife and myself', in which he places on record their most sincere regret and unreservedly ex- presses their deep apologies for the poem. Lord Dudley's letter continues:

We acknowledge the statements are untruth- ful and should never have been made. We undertake that we will never repeat or publish this offensive material again or any- thing similar relating to you or your family.

I do not think it unreasonable to argue that Lady Dudley's lips were effectively zipped up by this letter, which was plainly written at the royal solicitor's insistence. Perhaps Lord Dudley puts some other interpretation on his own words.

Perhaps he was advised by his lawyers that these letters were somehow 'pri- vileged' and unable to be produced. If so, he was badly advised, but in any case it would have been an act of extreme folly to rely on such advice in denying their exist- ence, of which he was perfectly well aware. Perhaps again he sees himself as some knight in shining armour, vicariously de- fending his pretty, sensitive, unvulgar, ungreedy wife against the calumnies of Princess Michael, and joining in Lady Dudley's 'well-deserved triumph' against the Literary Review. Has he no friends who can tell him he is pushing his luck?